BajaNomad

Peninsula Indians

bajalera - 7-6-2009 at 06:15 PM

Excerpt from Brown Skins/Black Robes in Baja Callifornia:

According to a Jesuit historian of modern times, "The most diverting characteristic of these poor savages was their childlike nature. They simply never grew up." This thought had been expressed centuries earlier by historian Francisco Clavijero, who said there were various examples of the Indians' childish simplicity, citing two of them.

The Epidemic of the Jars
Clavijero says that some Indians walking on a Pacific beach found several huge pottery jars, which were probably water containers left by seamen from a passing ship.

But to people who had never before seen vessels made of baked clay, this was an awesome find. They carried the jars to a cave near their campsite, and put them on display with their wide top openings facing the cave entrance. Curious Indians came from miles around to gaze at these wonders. The natives of one rancheria added a new performance to their dance repertoire, in which people mimicked the wide openings by dancing with their mouths agape.

But suddenly nearly everyone became sick, and nobody could figure out why this was happening. A meeting was held, and during a lengthy discussion of possible causes, one of the most respected men pointed out that the jars were the only new thing that had recently arrived in the area, and they must have brought the illness.

After further discussion, it was agreed that the epidemic had come from the jars, and they would have to be stopped up.
But it was feared that doing this might put somene in danger. So after still more discussion, several husky young men were selected to approach the jars carefully from behind, and stuff the gaping mouths with plant material.

This was done. (And when the epidemicd had run its course, everyone no doubt concluded that the solution had indeed been a wise one.)

Clavijro cited the epidemic of the jars as an example of childlikle simplicity. But in seeking the cause of sickness, the Indians tried to identify some new element that had entered their lives--which is what a familly doctor does today in trying to identify the source of an unusual illness.

In spite of its bias, this story is significant. It reveals that the Indians arrived at important decisions through long discussions, which led to consensus--and that people were concerned about the safety of men assigned to do dangerous work.

Overall, such behavior can reasonaly be described as that of responsible adults.

[Edited on 7-7-2009 by bajalera]

[Edited on 7-7-2009 by bajalera]

BajaDove - 7-6-2009 at 06:25 PM

Wow actual reasoning is that something that could be applied to life today? MORE LERA

rpleger - 7-7-2009 at 08:32 AM

Thanks for that...interesting

DianaT - 7-7-2009 at 09:35 AM

Thanks! Interesting story

ArvadaGeorge - 7-7-2009 at 08:10 PM

Brown Skins/Black Robes in Baja California---is this a book?
Who is the author?
My wife did a search for it came up 0??
Where do I find it?

bajalera - 7-7-2009 at 11:01 PM

Sorry I didn't make it clear that Brown Skins etc. is a manuscript, which should be a book by Christmas if I can ever manage to finish the chapter on Indian Resistance.

DianaT - 7-7-2009 at 11:14 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by bajalera
Sorry I didn't make it clear that Brown Skins etc. is a manuscript, which should be a book by Christmas if I can ever manage to finish the chapter on Indian Resistance.


I like the title of your book---curious, if you don't mind sharing, what is going to be the basic thesis of your book?

Hope you post some more excerpts---look forward to reading them.

longlegsinlapaz - 7-8-2009 at 06:59 AM

Thanks Lera! I really enjoy your writing, you dig up the most interesting details!:yes:

Lera

Baja Bernie - 7-8-2009 at 10:48 AM

Great to hear you are approaching the end of that journey.

Hope all is well with you and Carole.

I still think of the night we dined at Jesse's...you guys got a kick out of me using the 'wrong' bano....it was nicely decorated and with fresh cut flowers too.

Sure hope Jaime and I can make it down to La Paz soon.

bajalera - 7-8-2009 at 04:03 PM

My view, JD, is that many early observers of peninsula Indians wrote valuable first-hand descriptions of them, but often followed these up with opinions that are still being accepted without question by modern writers. I'm aiming at giving the natives a fair shake by taking a good look at early accounts, without dissing the efforts of the Jesuit missionaries.

And thanks for asking.

David K - 7-8-2009 at 04:49 PM

So, was there really a 'second harvest'??? :o;D

(I know, ... I need to get your book to find out!:biggrin: )

bacquito - 7-8-2009 at 05:16 PM

Thanks for the report.

DianaT - 7-8-2009 at 08:14 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by bajalera
My view, JD, is that many early observers of peninsula Indians wrote valuable first-hand descriptions of them, but often followed these up with opinions that are still being accepted without question by modern writers. I'm aiming at giving the natives a fair shake by taking a good look at early accounts, without dissing the efforts of the Jesuit missionaries.

And thanks for asking.


It is amazing how once something is written in historical accounts, it often gets repeated over and over and never questioned. And it sounds like you are working to see your subject through the eyes of the times---so difficult to not put our present perspectives into history.

REALLY look forward to your excepts and your final work---good luck

Diane

fishbuck - 7-8-2009 at 10:36 PM

Please don't be offended. But why is this at all relevent?
All the indigenous indians from Baja are long gone. Any indians in Baja today are transplants from the mainland.
What's the point?

David K - 7-9-2009 at 08:14 AM

Mike, for some... the past is interesting... knowing about the past is like a time machine to look at the way things were and perhaps why things are the way the are, today.

Baja is such a harsh land, I find it interesting why so many over the years have come to Baja... It must be a magical place to attract us there!

We learn from the past (well some of us do*)... in part to avoid mistakes made by those before us.

*the schools have stopped teaching so much about the past, it is no wonder we are seeing the results of it today.

BajaDove - 7-9-2009 at 08:40 AM

If one of your ancestors was hung for a crime he didn't commit and you brought forth evidence that he was innocent, would you want to hear 'That's irrelevant. We're not changing a line, it's history he's dead'?

[Edited on 7-9-2009 by BajaDove]

DianaT - 7-9-2009 at 09:22 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by fishbuck
Please don't be offended. But why is this at all relevent?
All the indigenous indians from Baja are long gone. Any indians in Baja today are transplants from the mainland.
What's the point?


For some, the reading of history is not only fascinating, it is a clue as to today. In some ways it is a time machine, but one from which many stories will emerge---there are very few "facts" in history, and lots of interpretation.

So even if all the players are gone, and in this case they are not, just their cultures, this piece of history deserves to be told again and again from different historians.

It is a story that many of us learned about beginning with the fairytale 4th grade version of the happy little missions that "civilized" the native Americans---all good. It was a part of the Columbus "discovered" America much to the benefit of the New World European biased history.

Then when the "others" began to gain a voice in the history of the US and Mexico, different stories were told---the ones of mass disease, slave labor, and the destruction of cultures. That is not to mention some of the really strange priests and their practices.

But the approach that it sounds like Bajalera is using, is the one that looks at the reality but tries to keep it in the context of the times---not an easy task. It is extremely difficult for anyone to divorce themselves from the present to look at the past, and highly debated as to if that is really possible.

I digress, but often a history book tells one more about the person who wrote the book and the time in which it was written than it does about the event. For example, when Woodrow Wilson wrote in his multi-volume history of the US that not one human being survived the Battle of the Little Big Horn, it was very informative about who Wilson was, and said little about the historical event.

These are the things that keep many of us reading about the same historical happening over and over again---a chance to see another perspective, think about it, compare it, and pull from it clues about today.

So, IMHO, it is a story that deserves to be told again and I look very forward to the final product.


Quote:

To know the truth of history is to realize its ultimate myth and its inevitable ambiguity. Roy P. Basler



Diane

[Edited on 7-9-2009 by jdtrotter]

bajajudy - 7-9-2009 at 10:12 AM

Lera
Fascinating stuff
Keep it coming....but not if it keeps you from finishing your book!

mtgoat666 - 7-9-2009 at 10:24 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by fishbuck
All the indigenous indians from Baja are long gone. Any indians in Baja today are transplants from the mainland.


incorrect, fishy. there are bands/towns of kumeyaay in northern baja. i don't know about southern baja, but who knows? wouldn't be surprised to hear of a few tribes out there living ooutside of the range of fishy's radar.

bajalera - 7-9-2009 at 11:02 AM

No offense taken, Fishbuck. Some readers are curious about the past, as explained so eloquently by JD, and others prefer the adventures of Erle Stanley Gardner and similar writers.

From the posts I've been reading on the Nomad board over the years, it seems to me that a lot of Bajaficionados would be interested in a book that merges historic accounts with research carried out in modern times by archaeologists, linguists, geographers, botanists and whoever--written in plain, non-academic English. (With a bit of naughtiness thrown in here and there to wake up bored readers whose eyes have begun to glaze over--Indians once mooned Spaniards who weren't willing to trade with them, they didn't seem to care who saw them having sex, their honchos sometimes offered "the use" of women to passing explorers.)

And yes, DK, there really was a Second Harvest, but it didn't consist of "picking out the seeds from their excreta," as is commonly reported. Padre Miguel del Barco, who took a closer look than Baegert and others, wrote a description that makes the seed collection somewhat less disgusting, and two different groups of English sailors found it edible without recognizing what it was. (Still not anything I'd care to down unless starving, however.)

fishbuck - 7-9-2009 at 03:54 PM

Turns out there are a few Indians left.

http://www.kumeyaay.info/documentary/

Anyone know of any others?

[Edited on 7-9-2009 by fishbuck]

David K - 7-9-2009 at 05:01 PM

Thank you Lee... I look forward to your book being published and want to buy an autographed copy for my Baja library!

Osprey - 7-9-2009 at 05:07 PM

No, beachcrash, if you don't care, why should we? Just make a friend of google and ask it that question if you are really interested. Most of the women of the Pericu, Guaycura and Cochimis would have no knowledge of modern hygiene and therefore would be, if offered to extanjeros, the kind of bedmates who might, I shudder to consider, offend (some).

fishbuck - 7-9-2009 at 05:10 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by Osprey
No, beachcrash, if you don't care, why should we? Just make a friend of google and ask it that question if you are really interested. Most of the women of the Pericu, Guaycura and Cochimis would have no knowledge of modern hygiene and therefore would be, if offered to extanjeros, the kind of bedmates who might, I shudder to consider, offend (some).


A ya bird, what ever you say man. What ever the he11 it is you're trying to say.:lol:

BajaDove - 7-10-2009 at 07:17 AM

David K, you will have to stand in line on that one and I know where there are seven of us that are ahead of you. That's only who I see regularly

David K - 3-2-2013 at 10:31 AM

I sure hope to see BajaLera's book published... I am counting on her son (BajaTripper) to help get it done! (Hear that Steve... the pressure is on!)

Skipjack Joe - 3-2-2013 at 02:00 PM

I, too, would be interested. Most books about baja (like nomad posts) are very similar This book appears to be unique.

bacquito - 3-2-2013 at 02:25 PM

Interesting and good reasoning

desertcpl - 3-2-2013 at 05:56 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by DianaT
Quote:
Originally posted by fishbuck
Please don't be offended. But why is this at all relevent?
All the indigenous indians from Baja are long gone. Any indians in Baja today are transplants from the mainland.
What's the point?


For some, the reading of history is not only fascinating, it is a clue as to today. In some ways it is a time machine, but one from which many stories will emerge---there are very few "facts" in history, and lots of interpretation.

So even if all the players are gone, and in this case they are not, just their cultures, this piece of history deserves to be told again and again from different historians.

It is a story that many of us learned about beginning with the fairytale 4th grade version of the happy little missions that "civilized" the native Americans---all good. It was a part of the Columbus "discovered" America much to the benefit of the New World European biased history.

Then when the "others" began to gain a voice in the history of the US and Mexico, different stories were told---the ones of mass disease, slave labor, and the destruction of cultures. That is not to mention some of the really strange priests and their practices.

But the approach that it sounds like Bajalera is using, is the one that looks at the reality but tries to keep it in the context of the times---not an easy task. It is extremely difficult for anyone to divorce themselves from the present to look at the past, and highly debated as to if that is really possible.

I digress, but often a history book tells one more about the person who wrote the book and the time in which it was written than it does about the event. For example, when Woodrow Wilson wrote in his multi-volume history of the US that not one human being survived the Battle of the Little Big Horn, it was very informative about who Wilson was, and said little about the historical event.

These are the things that keep many of us reading about the same historical happening over and over again---a chance to see another perspective, think about it, compare it, and pull from it clues about today.

So, IMHO, it is a story that deserves to be told again and I look very forward to the final product.


Quote:

To know the truth of history is to realize its ultimate myth and its inevitable ambiguity. Roy P. Basler



Diane

[Edited on 7-9-2009 by jdtrotter]




well I for one enjoy reading and learning about this alot,
fish you need to lighten up a bit,

academicanarchist - 4-8-2013 at 08:46 AM

Bajalera. I agree that it is important to document the past in Baja California, including the history, ethnohistory, and ethnography of the native populations. I hope you finish the manuscript soon. If you could provide an email (mine is robert1955@axtel.net), I will send you an article I published several years ago on resistance by the Guaycuros at the time of the transition from Jesuit to Franciscan administration. There is no question that Miguel del Barco had the best perspectives among the Jesuit accounts on native culture.

DianaT - 4-8-2013 at 08:56 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by academicanarchist
Bajalera. I agree that it is important to document the past in Baja California, including the history, ethnohistory, and ethnography of the native populations. I hope you finish the manuscript soon. If you could provide an email (mine is robert1955@axtel.net), I will send you an article I published several years ago on resistance by the Guaycuros at the time of the transition from Jesuit to Franciscan administration. There is no question that Miguel del Barco had the best perspectives among the Jesuit accounts on native culture.


Is your article still available? It sounds REALLY interesting.

academicanarchist - 4-8-2013 at 09:21 AM

The article was published in a journal in Argentina. I have it in a .pdf format.

academicanarchist - 4-8-2013 at 07:30 PM

Hello all. I have sent a copy of the article to David Kier in .pdf format. I am sure he would be happy to share it with anybody who might like to read it.

Interesting!

fixtrauma - 4-9-2013 at 09:31 PM

David K - 4-12-2013 at 09:21 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by academicanarchist
Hello all. I have sent a copy of the article to David Kier in .pdf format. I am sure he would be happy to share it with anybody who might like to read it.


Let me know, and I will see if I can post it here.